The World According to a Sane Man
by echoing noise
Summary: "And then there's the Potter child," Minevra thought. "The poor Potter child who just wants to take his medications in peace."  Takes place during DH, rated for drugs, language, violence, death, and mild adult situations. AU. HG.
1. Rule 1: Do not mock your reader, Harry

**The World According to a Sane Man**

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There's supposed to be something that will make all my problems go away.

It's supposed to be this wonderful, _amazing _talent of mine at this wonderful, _amazing _school where my wonderful, _amazing _parents went and everyone's oh-so-great. It's a place where everyone's happy and the birds sing and harps play, and oh yeah you're parent's murderer went there, won't this be a jolly good time?

I'm supposed to wave a stick and expect sparks to come out. I'm supposed to trust a bunch of deformed freaks with my vault of _gold. _You want me to follow their games and do as you say, believe as you do. You want me a blind follower, a lump of clay to mold.

Well, _I'm sorry I'm so horrible. _I'm sorry I don't think it's such a good idea to allow a strange man with a beard to escort me around the country, sorry if I think it's idiotic to get on a train from an imaginary platform and go somewhere I don't want to, sorry if I'd rather stay with the devil I know than the devil I don't.

I'm sorry that you're all senile and chemically imbalanced. I'm sorry that, for all these years, I've been going to a sane school. I'm sorry that you think that it's insane to be used to the caning, sorry that you think it's wrong for your 'hero' to be going to a school for criminals, sorry if all of a sudden, you want me back. 'Oh, no, it's the horrible man with his _magic! _Please, little boy, save us!'

Yeah, right.

You people have dragged me away from my school to a _graveyard, _chopped open my arm, and - and done your _magic. _And now you want me to come fix it? I don't think so.

I've clapped, and let me tell you, not a single fucking fairy has ever appeared. I've chased stars, and they don't come down any lower. I've wished and dreamed and had my heart broken, have had the cupboard door slammed in my face. I've fallen and bled and cried and watched people not care, I've seen what kids can be driven to and have been driven to it, have lived and died inside and just given up.

No, I won't fight for you. No, I don't care.

Clapping doesn't work anymore. Not for me.

* * *

_~Come with me, and I can show you the most beautiful things…~_

* * *

_Okay okay! so that's that for this first chapter of 'The World According to a Sane Man' - also know as 'Muggle or Nothing'. These are all Harry's writing, not mine, so while I'll be controlling the plot, expect lots of 'yeah, so'-ses and 'whatever's. This will change as Harry gets more comfortable with writing, but the first few chapters will be just as annoying as talking to the blonde 'round the corner. (No offense to blondes. It's a freakin' expression.)_

_Well, hopefully y'all enjoyed and want to keep reading - the chapters are short, but things'll be explained pretty soon. :) REVIEW, please._

_NEXT CHAPTER: _

_"...there are these crazy people... that think I'm their saviour. And, well, I'm not."_


	2. Rule 2: Please don't explain it again

**The World According to a Sane Man:  
**Harry Learns Expository Writing, Everyone!

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The first thing that you need to know about me is that I'm really, _really _sorry about the letter that you read before this one. I _swear, _I'm not usually like that. It was a thing... I had to do for therapy. It was just a thing. And I'm sorry about all the cursing, too, really sorry. But you shouldn't have been going through my stuff. Serves you right.

Um, okay. I guess I should just start telling the story, huh, so you don't have to spend too much time here.

Well - My name is Harry Potter. I'm seventeen and I have black hair that grows about a meter a minute and sits like a mop on my head, green eyes, gangly, awkward limbs and I'm really short and really skinny. I am a loser, an outcast, a delinquent, a freak. And I attend St. Brutus' Secure Centre for Incurably Criminal Boys.

I'm not the smartest guy in the world, and definitly not the luckiest. I'm the kind of guy that could walk out the door on a perfectly sunny day and get drenched in an unforseen downpour the next moment. I'm that guy that effs up hitting on a girl because a kid loses control of his bike and plows right into me. I'm the sort of guy that you'd never ask to watch your dog, because I'd probably kill it within about forty seconds. I'm just that bad at life, really.

Yeah. Pathetic.

Actually, just so you know, I don't really think this is my story to tell. But... I guess, also, this is the sort of thing that needs to be known. People deserve it, you know? Normally I would be a waste of time to listen to. I'm about the least interesting person on the planet, and everyone knows it. But I think I owe it to kind of a lot of people to tell this story, so I will and really hope you don't mind if I talk for awhile.

Um, you don't? Er, okay.

When I was fifteen months old my parents were killed by a madman. Somehow, I survived, and was raised by my Aunt Petunia and my Uncle Vernon along with my cousin Dudley, who is only a few months older than me. My Aunt Petunia looks like a cross between a giraffe and a horse, is always spying on the neighbors, and has a grating, incredibly irritating voice. Uncle Vernon is a beefy man who believes that if I had a 'proper' caning I wouldn't be so screwed up and steal things.

My cousin Dudley is a perfectly normal boy. Granted, he's fat git that still whings and whines to his Mummy, but he's normal and he's not a kleptomaniac or depressed or a freak, so.

So I grew up with my Aunt and Uncle and my cousin. I worked for my keep, making breakfast and doing chores. My bedroom was a cupboard until I was ten years old and was diagnosed with kleptomania. Kleptomania is, basically, an urge to steal that I can't really control. I know it sounds like an awful excuse, but I really can't stop myself when I get a need to steal something. I know that one of these days I'll get caught for something big and I'll get arrested and never get into a good uni, but so far I haven't been arrested or anything so... that's good, right? I mean, I guess.

Anyway, once I was diagnosed with kleptomania, Aunt Petunia moved me into Dudley's second bedroom. She was worried that the doctor that was treating me would ask questions, and she couldn't have anyone finding out the the normal Dursleys in their normal house kept their little orphan nephew locked up in a cupboard under the stairs.

It was like a badge of pride for them, that they'd been right about me being a freak all along. I heard them telling the nieghbours. Bragging about how good they were to take me in.

After that, I tried hard not to be a burden. I had one last year at my primary school before I'd be shipped off for nine months out of the year to St. Brutas', and during that time I cleaned, cooked, helped Aunt Petunia shop at the grocer's... I tried hard. Nothing was enough, of course, I know that. But I felt like I was at least doing something to make having to care for me a little bit less hard.

Anyway, I'll try to keep going with the story so you don't have to listen to me for too long. Sorry about that, I get distracted.

When I was eleven, well, a lot of stuff happened. But the important thing is that letters started coming, saying things about a school called Hogwarts and how I was a wizard and could go to the school my parents went to and do all sorts of special things.

I remember when I opened that letter, out in the Dursley's sparkling clean hallway - and, God, it was like my face broke open with that smile. I don't think I'd ever felt happier than I did just then.

Not one part of me though it was a joke. I stood there, grin spread all over my face, and then I started to laugh and Aunt Petunia came out and glared at me. I desereved it; I was taking forever to deliver the mail to Uncle Vernon, but I was just so happy that something good was finally happening to me that I didn't even care.

I remember Aunt Petunia's face getting pale as she snatched the letter out of my hands, and how Uncle Vernon came out and read it too. And at that instant he looked madder than I've ever seen him.

But Aunt Petunia beat him to the punch.

"You can't go," she snapped at me, her words like scissor blades as they floated into my ears. "Your medicine doesn't work with all the magic. You won't be allowed."

I could feel the grin slide off my face as I slipped back into that same pit of nothing that I'd been living in for the past year. Of course. No school would want a kleptomaniac. I was a freak and on medication and the Dursleys had already started payment for the tuition to St. Brutas', anyway. It would have been ungrateful of me to think of wasting their money by going somewhere else.

I sent a letter back saying I couldn't go. They sent three letters in return.

Each time I said no, the letters increased in number. Eventually a woman named Minevra McGonnagal came to our door demanding a better explanation than I'd been giving in my letters back to her.

At first I didn't want to tell her. I didn't want this woman who came from the magic school that actually _wanted _me, for once, to know that I broke the law and sinned all the time and was on medication and was a freak.

"The boy steals things," Aunt Petunia told her as I stared at the carpet and felt my face burn. "He's mentally unstable. We're paying for his medication."

And then Mrs. McGonnagal did about the most mortifying thing she could have done.

She turned to me.

Face sever and unforgiving, she demanded to know the truth. "Mr. Potter? Is this correct?"

"Er, yes ma'am."

I don't think I have ever been so dissapointed in my life than when I saw her face just then. "And is it also correct," she continued, "that you do not wish to attend Hogwarts?"

My face burned and I stared at the holes in my trainers. "Yes, ma'am."

She paused, staring at me, and I still to this day don't know if it was because she wanted me to change my mind or because she finally realized what a dissapointment I was. "Very well," she said. "Then I will go." Turning to Aunt Petunia, she said, "Don't expect that this is the last you will hear of us."

For Aunt Petunia, however, that _was _the last she heard of the people from the magic school. For me? No, I wouldn't see the last of them for a very long time to come.

After that I marked time by the letters that McGonnagal sent me. She'd also given me a secondhand wand, so I practiced the movement she taught me and the spells that went with it. It was hard learning from instructions on paper, but I did it anyway. There were laws for people like me; the ones that didn't go to Hogwarts, but my case was also special. What it boiled down to was that since I had specifically said I didn't want to go to Hogwarts and wasn't recieving any Ministry-sanctioned magical training, the magic couldn't be detected and I was pretty much home free when it came to their laws.

The years came and went and I continued to learn from McGonnagal. For my twelth birthday she gave me a subscrpition to _The Daily Prophet, _a newspaper written by the magic folk.

That newspaper, I think, was one of the best things that ever happened to me. I began to think of myself as included; I stopped reffering to them as _magic people _and started calling them _wizards _and _witches _and men and women just like me, and even though I was on medication and went to a school for boy delinquients, it made me feel like I wasn't such a freak. And that, I remember, was another one of those bright points in my life with the Dursleys: It wasn't a burst of a smile like the letter had been, but somehow each day didn't feel so impossible to get through. For a while, anyway.

When I was thirteen the magic began to spill even into the normal household of the Dursley's, in the form of Sirius Black on the television. McGonagall told me that he was a criminal in the wizarding world, wanted for the murder of twelve muggles (people without magic) and one wizard.

That's when I realized that there were criminals in the magical world, too. I'd always known, of course, because of the man that had murdered my parents. But it had never really hit me until then.

I don't know why, but I didn't like the thought of that. It made me feel like I'd tainted that world, too, made it worse somehow. My stealing and lying had spilled over into magic; the one thing that was supposed to be good in my life.

Shortly after that, I had a relapse. I stole a watch from a shop in London and it was an expensive one, too. After all the legal problems had been sorted out they upped my dosage for the Prozac and I was good for a while. I slept worse because of the meds but I was okay. I was okay.

When I was fourteen I was on campus but out of the dorms, trying to make my way back before the administrators checked to make sure no one was sneaking out.

And then there were men all around me.

Long story short, they took me to a graveyard and tried to perform some sort of ritual. A man cut his hand off and sliced my arm open, I still have the scar. And then they were brewing some sort of potion - a man came out of the couldren and he was pale and sickly looking, like a human... snake...

And I was tied up to a headstone and he pointed his wand at me and suddenly I was in more pain than I'd ever felt before. It was like knives and hammers on my skin, beating at me and I was splitting apart but I was still alive -

When it stopped, after years and years, it seemed, he said to me:

"Potter, the rumors of your Squib status seem to have been exaggerated."

He paused and I was breathing hard and all I remember is the black sky above me with the stars like diamonds, and thinking about how bad I wanted to steal a star right then.

He touched my forehead, and it felt like it was splitting apart. I screamed - someone screamed, at least, and I think it was me.

And then I was back in the lawn of St. Brutas' and I was panting and just - just - I really don't like this part of the story. Let's just skip it, okay?

So they upped m dosage again and they played around with my meds, and eventually I was on a mix of Revia and Prozac, with lower doses on both. It was a weird mix but I got used to it eventually and it was pretty good.

When I was fifteen - well, I'm actually surprised that I didn't have another relapse that year. It was a bad one for me. Dudley and I got cornered by something called _Dementors _and I was able to cast a Patronus to keep them away, but they made me think I was back in that - that pit of just _nothing _and that scared me...

And I heard a woman screaming...

All year that year, I had visions. Horrible visions, in the night and whenever I slept, of the man-snake (McGonnagal told me his name was Voldemort). I didn't tell anyone, though. I didn't want to add schizophrenia to the list of reasons of why I was a burden on society.

Sixth year was fairly normal. Near the end of it, though, I got a letter from someone besides McGonnagal. His name was Albus Dumbledore, it said, and he was dead.

He'd left me a little golden snitch, saying my dad had played chaser when he was in school. (McGonnagal had already explained to me all about Quidditch, I guess you lot already know about that so I won't waste your time explaining it.)

That letter went on for pages and pages, explaining to me about Voldemort (his real name was Tom Riddle,) and how he'd been the one to kill my parents. (That I'd already known, of course.) It went on and on about how he split his souls into these dark, evil things called _Horcruxes _and how I had to be the one to kill him.

McGonnagal had told me lots of things about all the things Voldemort had done. I'd seen things, too, if my visions could be believed. Torture and murder and... sick things. So the news that I had to be the one to kill the bastard didn't really bother me at all.

My name's Harry Potter, and this is my life. I go to St. Brutas' School Secure Centre for Incurably Criminal Boy. I've, well... seen a lot of things, I guess. I'vedone a lot of things. There are these crazy people out there who have been teaching me magic for six years now, and they think I'm their saviour. And see, I'm not.

But I can die trying, that's for sure. I'm really looking forward to seeing the light leave that Voldemort bastard's eyes.

Some days, I _really _think they need to up my Lithobid dosage.

* * *

_~And if you put your hand in mine I can't say I'll hold back~_

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_A/N: So the quote I gave you last chapter was changed a little bit. Go cry in a corner. ANYWAY, moving on. HAPPY 2011, everyone! Personally I celebrate the new year in the spring, but that's a whole other very long and boring story. Okay. So. Relevent information... oh, right. This started out as three seperate chapters and was almost all action. Now it's been completly rewritten and is all explain-ey and gross and boring... why does Harry have to be so polite and explain everything to you people? Like, really. He's so nice. Gah._

_IMPORTANT NOTE! All of the medications that Harry mentions are, in fact, used to treat kleptomania (which is a very real disease.) So if you see Prozac, don't assume he's depressed, and if you see Lithobid, don't assume he's bipolar. Also important to mind is that I am not going to pretend to know very much about kleptomania. In this fic, Harry needs to take his Prozac weekly and his Lithbid... well, actually, I don't know what the Lithobid timeframe is. There is frustratingly little about Lithobid on the internet. SO. If you have expierience with ANY of these medications or kleptomania, then PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE drop me a review (signed or anonymous,) or PM me. I will not mention your name in this fic, on my profile, or anywhere else. (This is actually why I'd recommend the anonymous review route.) Thanks so much for your patience. If you have any questions about anything PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE ask me and I will DEFINITLY answer them as best I can._

_ALSO NOTE: this fic is rated M for legal drug use, illegal activities, mild sexual situations, violence, and death. Just thought I'd mention that, because PrincessPearl mentioned the M rating bothered her. I would have PM'ed her, but I needed to tell eveyone anyway. Plus I was lazy._

_Harry will get more annoyed/sarcastic next chapter, don't worry._

_Okay, that was a really long AN..._

_Oh, and I have no beta. *puppy eyes*_


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